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Viruses on a mac? yes according to this print shop.
- Thread starter hdsalinas
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here is the information on it.
Its not really that malicious. More of an annoyance than a major worry.
same thing happend on my macbook completly blanked out as if it earased my user but it was really my fault I ran a beta after it expred and it told me make sure you delete this before it expires or bad things will happen.
As pointed out, OS 9 had a handful of viruses.
OS X has had zero viruses; it's had the odd security vulnerability (un-exploited) that was quickly patched by Apple. There have been two or three proof-of-concept Trojans that never spread in the wild.
I knew a guy who claimed in passing that the Macs at his work got viruses just like the Windows machines. I then asked him to name a single virus they'd gotten and he couldn't.
OS X has had zero viruses; it's had the odd security vulnerability (un-exploited) that was quickly patched by Apple. There have been two or three proof-of-concept Trojans that never spread in the wild.
I knew a guy who claimed in passing that the Macs at his work got viruses just like the Windows machines. I then asked him to name a single virus they'd gotten and he couldn't.
Can someone show me the apple store that took the machine back, and provide me with a virus for my G4 PB, so I can swap it for an MBP ?
I also suspect it was one of the old Mac OS viruses. They're still out there.
As others have noted, print shop lady was almost certainly following her company policy.
As others have noted, print shop lady was almost certainly following her company policy.
She was running a G3 Mac so that indicates she may have been running Mac OS 9 or before.
If so, there were some virus that could attack Mac OS 9. There were also the Word and Excel Macro virus to consider.
I forget what the total count was back in those days, but there were a few.
If so, there were some virus that could attack Mac OS 9. There were also the Word and Excel Macro virus to consider.
I forget what the total count was back in those days, but there were a few.
Repeat after me.
There are no viruses for OSX.
Anyway...
What the thread starter should have said, there are no viruses for OSX, that would have cleared the entire issue up with the printer lady, instead a generalisation was made and the printer lady was confused as are a few individuals here.
I thought the thread subject was exploiting the recent contest for cheap sensationalism. It seems possible this is just an attempt to 'fan the flames'. Afterall, who really cares about something that is hearsay, unproveable, happened on a completely different platform, and also happened five years ago?
I was chatting with someone a couple of nights ago and brought up the Mac class I teach at our local community college. He asked about the Mac and its advantages. Among other things I mentioned the lack of viruses and malware, to which he responded, expressing some doubt over my claim I suppose, that he'd heard something about viruses for the Mac. Exactly where he could not recall. I don't know where this comes from, but I suspect that each time Apple fixes a security vulnerability, some take it to mean that the Mac has been successfully attacked by a virus.
Symptoms Of My Mac Virus!!
I'm hoping someone can tell me WTF is going on. Here's my horror story. I own an old g3 tower and a g4 laptop. (Also have a new mac pro intel tower) But it's the G3 that is the problem. EVery external drive I hook up to it goes dead or loses ALL of its files. And I mean all. The first time happened a couple fo years ago...and I didn't know what happened...but I chalked it up to a bad hard drive. I got another hard drive..and it worked fine for a while...then the same thing. While I was trying to find out what was going on with external drive #2, I hooked it up to my laptop to see if I could see its files there...then my laptop hard edrive went dead...When I took it to apple, the replaced it and saif I had a hard drive failure. I also synched my Ipod to the G3 and it died...I went through 4 different Ipods before I stopped connecting ANY external drive to the G3. I can copy content to CD's with no apparent effects...just no external drives of any sort.
I was very good about not connecting ANY external drive that EVER connected to my G3 until today....while looking for some old files...i hooked up some old external firewire drives to my new MAc Pro Tower...They wouldn't show up on the desktop...and to my horror I realized that one of the drive had been hooked up to the G3.
I hooked up one of my newer Lacie drives back up to the mac pro tower..and it didn't show up immediately..but it finally did show with all files intact...then needing to transfer some larger video files from my laptop, I hooked the Lacie drive up to my laptop...It wouldn't show up on the desktop...I doublechecked the wire and restarted. It showed up...but ALL of my files are now gone...ALL of them...this broke my heart especially becasue of the pictures it contained. I ran a virus check on my laptop and came up with nothing. But something is definiteley going on here.
Has ANYONE heard of a Mac virus that deletes content from external drives? If so, what can I do...and can I get my content back? PLease help!
I'm hoping someone can tell me WTF is going on. Here's my horror story. I own an old g3 tower and a g4 laptop. (Also have a new mac pro intel tower) But it's the G3 that is the problem. EVery external drive I hook up to it goes dead or loses ALL of its files. And I mean all. The first time happened a couple fo years ago...and I didn't know what happened...but I chalked it up to a bad hard drive. I got another hard drive..and it worked fine for a while...then the same thing. While I was trying to find out what was going on with external drive #2, I hooked it up to my laptop to see if I could see its files there...then my laptop hard edrive went dead...When I took it to apple, the replaced it and saif I had a hard drive failure. I also synched my Ipod to the G3 and it died...I went through 4 different Ipods before I stopped connecting ANY external drive to the G3. I can copy content to CD's with no apparent effects...just no external drives of any sort.
I was very good about not connecting ANY external drive that EVER connected to my G3 until today....while looking for some old files...i hooked up some old external firewire drives to my new MAc Pro Tower...They wouldn't show up on the desktop...and to my horror I realized that one of the drive had been hooked up to the G3.
I hooked up one of my newer Lacie drives back up to the mac pro tower..and it didn't show up immediately..but it finally did show with all files intact...then needing to transfer some larger video files from my laptop, I hooked the Lacie drive up to my laptop...It wouldn't show up on the desktop...I doublechecked the wire and restarted. It showed up...but ALL of my files are now gone...ALL of them...this broke my heart especially becasue of the pictures it contained. I ran a virus check on my laptop and came up with nothing. But something is definiteley going on here.
Has ANYONE heard of a Mac virus that deletes content from external drives? If so, what can I do...and can I get my content back? PLease help!
Because there are no MacOS X viruses, a virus is the last thing that you can suspect. I notice that you listed neither the OS nor the files system for any of your computers. If your old G3 is running a version of the MacOS older than MacOS 8.1--which is possible--and your external drive is formatted HFS+ (MacOS Extended), then your G3 will not be able to see its files. If your hard drive is formatted FAT32 and your G3 doesn't have the PC File Exchange control panel, then your G3 won't be able to see the files on the drive....
Has ANYONE heard of a Mac virus that deletes content from external drives? If so, what can I do...and can I get my content back? PLease help!
from this page:There you go.
Wiki said:
The Leap A 'virus' requires authorisation to download in Safari, as well as an administrator's username and password, before it can execute, so while it still has potential to be malicious, it is very ineffective, as anyone with half a brain cell will know that images don't contain applications, and that an image shouldn't need authorisation to open.
It didn't even do anything; at most, it slowed the system down a bit. It was more of a proof-of-concept than a fully-blown virus.
can i just ask why there arent hardly any mac viruses. and whats more why dont they spread!? surely osx, sorry os ten (from the other thread hahaha), has some holes that can be exploited and run through to all macs. there would be hackers out there with viruses. so why arent they actually doing any damagae??? i dont think osx(ten wateva) is invincible...but it would seem so
I don't know for sure, but it is probably because Mac OS X is more secure than Windows, and any discovered holes get patched fairly quickly. but then it seems like a lot of hackers would want to be able to create the first virus on the Mac. So my guess is that it is more difficult and most of the Hackers with the skill to do it have other jobs using their skills for legal uses so don't bother.
Repeat after me.
There are no viruses for OSX.
Anyway...
No working viruses for relatively recent version of OS X, as in, 10.3 and onwards. There were a few viruses released for 10.0 and .1 when they were out, although they don't really exist any more (partly because nobody uses those OSes), and I seem to remember there was a back-door app which exploited a vulnerability in 10.2 when it first came out, but that was patched by Apple almost straight away.